Description
Two assertions about the relationship between revolution and international order require re-examination. First is the view that revolutionaries for much of history have been disrupters, resisters and remakers of international order. The second is that powerful state actors, as guardians of the international status quo, approach revolution with virulent animosity in their attempts to stymie revolutionary change. I argue that both these assertions are the exception, rather than the rule. Instead of revolution and international order being on a collision course for much of the twentieth century, I show that revolutionaries and great powers have frequently engaged in processes of mutual toleration. This complicates our understandings of revolutionaries as thorough-going resisters, and of status quo powers as opponents of revolutionary change. This paper’s central claim of mutual toleration is supported empirically by a novel macro-historical dataset that maps the more than 200 revolutionary episodes that unfolded between 1900 and 2020. This dataset is crucial in elucidating when revolutionary and great power ordering projects clash or cohere, as well as why mutual toleration has been the modus vivendi patterning revolutionary-great power relations. Such findings are crucial in furthering our understandings of global resistance, international orders, as well as the role of revolution in grinding the gears of world change.
